Commons on Flickr, Canberra, 4 December 2008

The National Library of Australia has a series of excellent talks on cultural aspects of the Internet. The next is by George Oates, program manager for Flickr's Commons project and former chief designer for Flickr, 4 December 2008:

Human Traffic, General Public
If there's one thing about Web 2.0, it's that we're realising that there are actually people using the internet. It's no longer about Human to Computer interaction, but rather Human to Human. The Commons on Flickr is an opportunity for Flickr members to participate in describing the world's publicly held photography collections. The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.

George Oates is the program manager for Flickr's Commons project and was the former chief designer for Flickr.

George Oates will be introduced by Paul Hagon,
Web Developer, National Library of Australia
Time: 13.00 to 14.00
Date: Thursday 4 December 2008
Venue: National Library of Australia Theatre
This is a free event, open to all

Bobby Graham
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
Tel: +61 2 6262 1542
www.nla.gov.au

Broadband, libraries and the creation of Australia’s digital culture

The National Library of Australia is hosting "Broadband, libraries and the creation of Australia’s digital culture" on Tuesday 18th November 2008, 9:00 AM, NLA Theatre, in Canberra:

With the new federal government establishing a Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, maximising the potential of Australia’s digital culture has become a new strategic focus. Libraries, archives and related information agencies have a central role to play in exploiting these opportunities by helping communities and organisations – from the local to the national, and across sectors – come to grips with the possibilities that this focus on the digital world offers.

This seminar, the third in a series jointly supported by the National Library of Australia, Charles Sturt University and ALIA is intended to provide a broad overview of what this means for libraries and information agencies in strategy and in practice.

Information access in technical and scientific literature

The National Library of Australia runs an excellent series of free Digital Culture talks. The next is "Information access in technical and scientific literature: search and you may possibly find", 12.30, Friday 27 June 2008 at the National Library of Australia Theatre, Canberra:

The phenomenal success of web search engines such as Google is built on massive data redundancy, guiding users from simplistic queries to relevant information sources. For domains such as technical and scientific literature, however, this redundancy is severely limited, due to editorial controls on originality of content. Here there is a clear need to go beyond simple keyword search in order to service what are often complex information needs. In this talk I will present a frank and accessible account of text mining techniques developed to enhance information access, and abstract away from simple word sequences to syntactically and semantically richer representations of the information encoded in text.

Timothy Baldwin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Melbourne. His research - funded by the ARC, NICTA, NTT, Google and others - encompasses computational and theoretical linguistics, text mining, text categorisation and information retrieval. He has given invited talks at various conferences, summer schools and universities worldwide, and is the author of over 100 journal and conference publications. He is currently on the editorial board of Computational Linguistics, a series editor for CSLI Publications, and a member of the Deep Linguistic Processing with HPSG Initiative (DELPH-IN).


Timothy Baldwin will be introduced by Kent Fitch,
Programmer, IT Division, National Library of Australia
Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Date: Friday 27 June 2008
Venue: National Library of Australia Theatre
This is a free event

Bobby Graham
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
www.nla.gov.au

Copyright and the Internet Archive, Canberra, 3 April 2008

Matthew Rimmer will be giving a free talk in Canberra, 3 April 2008, in the National Library's Digital Culture talk series on copyright law and the Internet Archive . Recommended:

Back to the future: copyright law, Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine

Dr Matthew Rimmer

Internet Archive provides free 'universal access to human knowledge' to researchers, historians, scholars and the general public. Their delightfully named Wayback Machine provides access to websites that have been significantly altered or may no longer exist. Notwithstanding this altruistic endeavour, Internet Archive has been embroiled in a number of policy debates over copyright law over the extension of copyright term, 'orphan' works, take-down notices, digital locks and large-scale digitisation projects. The Internet Archive has also been involved in litigation as a plaintiff, a defendant, and an amicus curiae (a friend of the court). In the light of such policy debate and litigation, there is a need to reform digital copyright laws so that digital libraries such as Internet Archive can flourish - without fear of disruption from copyright owners.

Dr Matthew Rimmer is a senior lecturer and the director of Higher Degree Research at the ANU College of Law, and an associate director of the Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture (ACIPA). He holds a BA (Hons) and a University Medal in literature, and a LLB (Hons) from the Australian National University, and a PhD in law from the University of New South Wales. Rimmer is a member of the Copyright and Intellectual Property Advisory Group of the Australian Library and Information Association, and a director of the Australian Digital Alliance.

Dr Rimmer will be introduced by Laura Simes, Copyright Advisor, National Library of Australia

Date: Thursday 3 April 2008
Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Venue: Library Theatre
This talk is free and open to everyone.

Bobby Graham
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
Tel: +61 2 6262 1542
www.nla.gov.au

Public Knowledge Project, 15 February 2008, Canberra

Recommended talk at the National Library of Australia, 15 February 2008, 12.30 pm in Canberra. Kevin Stranack is from the Public Knowledge Project at the Simon Fraser University, which produced the free Open Journal System publishing software which I used to set up the Australian Computer Society digital library:

It gives me pleasure to invite you to the next Digital Culture talk:
The Public Knowledge Project: Breaking Down the Barriers to Open Access
Kevin Stranack


Are you concerned about the spiraling costs of academic journals? Do you worry that access to critical research information is under threat? This presentation will describe the work of the Public Knowledge Project, and discuss some of the steps librarians and others in Canada, Australia, and other countries around the world are taking to confront the crisis in scholarly communication, and ensure that readers and authors remain connected.

A collaboration between the University of British Columbia, Stanford University, and Simon Fraser University's Library and Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, the Public Knowledge Project has grown from a small research project into a global, community-based, open access publishing alternative, providing free, open source software for hundreds of researchers, editors, software developers, and librarians.

Kevin will be introduced by Chris Foster, Director Monographs Branch, National Library of Australia

The speakerKevin Stranack is a librarian with the Public Knowledge Project at the Simon Fraser University Library. He works with editors, publishers, software developers, and librarians in their use of open source software for open access publishing, and is the author of "OJS in an Hour", "OCS in an Hour", "Getting Found, Staying Found", and other documents published by the Project. Kevin is a frequent presenter at library and information technology conferences, including the Canadian Library Association, the British Columbia Library Association, the Charleston Conference, Access, BCNet, NetSpeed, and others.

Date: Friday 15 February 2008
Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Venue: Library Theatre
This talk is free and open to everyone. ...

Bobby Graham
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
www.nla.gov.au

Digital Culture - Technology and Media in 2020

Recommended:

Digital Culture Talk
National Library of Australia

Technology and Media in 2020
Speaker: Abigail Thomas

Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Date: Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Venue: Library Theatre, NLA
Entry: Free

• What will media and technology look like in 2020?
• Do the seeds lie in current trends like the desire for user generated content, creativity, always-on connections and on-demand content?
• Or should we look to science fiction to help us predict the future?
  

Biographical details: Abigail Thomas, Head, Strategic Innovation & Development, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Abigail Thomas has nine years’ experience within the digital and new media environment in the UK and Australia.

In her current role in the ABC’s new Innovation Division, Abigail is responsible for strategic research and development and the creation of innovative projects across the ABC which utilise new media platforms and technologies. This includes interactive television, video downloads and virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Abigail joined the ABC in 2000 and has had a number of different roles including responsibility for project managing the launch of ABC2, the ABC’s digital multichannel, overseeing audience and industry research in the new media space as well as providing policy and strategic advice on corporate issues.

Abigail also worked in the UK for the Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport as Head of Commercial and Digital Broadcasting, with responsibility for government policy on the development of digital broadcasting, at a time when digital TV had just been launched in the UK. Prior to that she undertook a visiting research fellowship for the UK Government, researching digital TV developments in a number of countries (UK, Europe, US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan) and comparing government, industry and academic perspectives on the future implications of digital broadcasting and its regulation.

Bobby Graham
BGRAHAM(a)la.gov.au
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
Tel: +61 2 6262 1542
www.nla.gov.au

Previous talks in the Series:

• Second Life, 14 February 2007
• E-publishing in Australian Universities, 27 November 2006

Second Life for Librarians

Kathryn Greenhill just finished her talk on Second Life, at the (real) National Library of Australia in Canberra. Second life is an online virtual world. Kathryn is a librarian at the (real) Murdoch University Library in Western Australia. She also co-ordinates the virtual "Australian Libraries Building" inside Second Life.

Kathryn gave an introduction to Second Life and an online tour of the Australian Libraries Building. The building is modeled on a real library, with interfaces to traditional online library resources, but done in a whimsical way.

One aspect which worried me is that Second Life is a for-profit company product. You can purchase an "island" to display your products and services. The Australian Libraries Building is on an island devoted to libraries around the world. While anyone can use second life for free, it costs real money to set up a building and it is effectively a virtual private gated community.

The interface for second life is a two dimensional rendering of a virtual 3d world. Each user of the system is represented by an Avatar; a graphical representation of the person. The avatar and the environment can be customized to look and behave differently, partly using purchased resources (using a local currency). The user interface is similar to that of a video game (but without the guns and violence, for the present).

All this made me feel old and alienated. Not being a computer games player I found the visual interface unnatural. I had difficult seeing the details and keeping up with the blurry, animated items. The overly rich visual design made me feel nauseous (much as a set of 3d goggles does after a couple of minutes use).

However, there was a great level of enthusiasm displayed by Kathryn and evidently a lot of effort being put in by other librarians. But will this translate into a mainstream product or be just for a few geeks?

At question time I asked if there was an alternative accessible interface for the blind. Kathryn didn't know and I was shocked that the audience of librarians laughed at the idea. I would have assumed that librarians would know they have a professional and legal obligation to provide services to the disabled. Not providing an interface for the blind, if is technically feasible and not too expensive, is unlawful. While Second Life may seem a virtual place, unlawful actions carried out there are within the jurisdiction of Australian courts (I had to do an expert witness report for an international online libel case a few days ago).

Correction 15 February 2007: Above I wrote that the audience of librarians laughed at my suggestion there should be an alternative accessible interface for the blind. Someone else there says they were laughing at were the antics of the avatars on the screen, behind the speaker, not at my question. My apologies to the audience if this was the case.

Another audience member asked a question about the bandwidth needed for the interface. Apparently the graphical interface required a lot of bandwidth. This would seem a fruitful area for IT research. It should be possible to optimize the the system to reduce the bandwidth needed and provide an interface for the blind at the same time. I might set it as an ANU e-Science project for the students to do.

This talk was one in the excellent NLA Digital Culture series. Unfortunately the NLA doesn't have a public web page about the series. But the next time they email me an invitation I will blog it.

Second Life, 14 February 2007, Canberra

This is in the same series as Vic Elliott's talk on academic publishing. Recommended:

NLA Digital Culture talks:

Flying Librarians of Oz: What's the fuss about Second Life and what's it got to do with libraries?

Second Life is an online virtual community created by its residents and run by Linden Labs. Over two million people have registered: Dell Computing, Adidas, Harvard Law School and the United States Congress all have a presence there. ...

Kathryn Greenhill, a librarian at Murdoch University Library in Western Australia, co-ordinates the Australian Libraries Building. She will provide a guided tour of the Australian Libraries Building and discuss some of the benefits to librarians of having a Second Life.

Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Date: Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Venue: Library Theatre
Entry: Free
Speaker: Kathryn Greenhill, Librarian, Murdoch University Library, Western Australia
Introduced by Matthew Stuckings, Reader Services Branch, National Library of Australia

Bobby Graham
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia

Using eBay for PM's Center at Parliament House, NLA, 31 October 2006

Recommended free talk at NLA. No need to book, just turn up (the last talk on Wikipedia at NLA was good):

---
Digital Culture Series at the National Library of Australia

Speaker: Michael Richards, Senior Historian, Old Parliament House
Topic: New ways of collecting at Old Parliament House
Time: 12.30 to 13.30 on Tuesday, 31 October 2006
Place: Library Theatre, National Library of Australia

Michael Richards talks about Old Parliament House’s collecting interests and how eBay is relevant to the institution in the current environment, particularly with the development of the Prime Minister’s Centre.

Michael Richards is a historian, librarian and keen student of theology (in his spare time). He curated many exhibitions during a twelve year stint at the National Library, beginning in 1988 with ‘People, Print & Paper’, the Library’s touring bicentennial exhibition. Michael has also worked in Manuscripts and as a cataloguer at the Library.

Since 1998 Michael has worked at Old Parliament House (OPH) in a variety of roles, and is currently Senior Historian, with responsibility for collection development. He also manages a small research centre and the oral history program at OPH.

Michael studied at the University of Queensland and James Cook University, where he wrote an MA thesis on the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Michael will be introduced by Linda Groom, Curator of Pictures, National Library of Australia
This is a free public event
---